Time for changes for India

It was a mere formality, and early on Day 5, Australia hammered in the final nail into the wreckage that has been India's performances abroad since the tour of England. Out of that wreckage, change must come if India want better results.

The rumours of an impending retirement announcement turned out to be unfounded, but only so far as there was no announcement. The decision might well have been taken by at least Dravid and Laxman that Adelaide was their last Test match. If it is, then there is no more to be said, except accord a warm reception and farewell when the announcement is officially made and thank them for such sterling service to Indian cricket. If it is not though, then it makes matters more interesting.

For a start, both Dravid and Laxman have had an extremely poor series while batting. Tendulkar has been relatively better, but on an absolute scale, his numbers aren't really great either. It is worth noting though, that India will not play Test cricket away from home for a considerable period. And in the last Test series that was played at home - against West Indies immediately before the Australia tour - the two batsmen who had the highest averages and run aggregates were, you guessed it, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid.

That, however, doesn't mean the right way forward is to continue to play with the same team since all of India's cricket is in familiar conditions now.

All three stalwarts are in the twilight of their careers and it's better if they go at a time when there is enough space for the ones who will replace them to grow into Test cricket. This is the perennial problem that any country faces when it is blessed with a clutch of great players. Because the players are so good, they last beyond the ordinary playing spans of lesser players. Consequently, the generation of players that comes next has to sit on the fringes during their best years, and there is then, an inevitable downturn in fortunes while the transition happens.

The downturn has already happened for team India and the time to begin the transition, is therefore now. In England, India didn't have their strongest eleven for a match for any Test (thought that still doesn't mean a team should be blanked 4-0 by such huge margins), but in Australia the best possible team was sent and still returned with four equally huge defeats. It's therefore clear enough that change is needed.

It's not a question of whether the new generation will fill the shoes of the three stalwarts as well as the three themselves did. They might not, but then again, they might too. When Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman made their debuts in 1996 nobody could have predicted that they would help Indian cricket rise to such great heights. Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli and the rest therefore deserve the chance to try and emulate the men they grew up watching.

And by 'emulate' they must emulate everything. When India won zilch abroad for decades, these men didn't sit back and say, 'Let them come to India, we'll beat them on turners'. They set themselves the goal of making India a force abroad, and to a large extent, they succeeded. And so, while it is the right time for the stalwarts to walk into the sunset, the way they played their cricket, and what they brought to Indian cricket must not be forgotten. They might be going, their legacy should stay.